Boardwalk wood selection has Wildwood officials, environmentalists at odds

WILDWOOD - It's deja vu all over again on the Jersey Shore, where Wildwood officials are trying to finish a $3.5 million boardwalk renovation as the calendar marches briskly toward spring.

In an uncanny coincidence, the resort finds itself in a predicament involving a boardwalk, a deadline, and a controversial rain-forest hardwood, just as Ocean City - its Cape May County neighbor 25 miles north - did this time last year.

On one side of a gaping hole in his town's beloved promenade is Wildwood's sweating mayor, pondering what will become of 21/2 blocks of the boardwalk's most heavily trafficked section.

Behind him are dozens of business owners, who never miss a chance to remind him that it's only months - mere weeks, actually - until hordes of tourists will want to perambulate along the famous wooden walkway.

On the other side are relentless environmental advocates, who have spent untold hours lobbying Shore municipalities to reject tropical hardwoods such as the one Wildwood plans to use to finish its redecking project.

"It's really a nightmare to think that we still have to keep educating people about what using rain-forest wood does to the environment," said Georgina Shanley of Ocean City, co-founder of Friends of the Rainforest. "But it's a fight we'll keep up as long as we have to."

Compared with domestic cedar, pine and other wood traditionally used to build boardwalks, lumber from some rain-forest trees is much tougher. Planks of a hardwood called ipe (pronounced EE-pay), found mostly in Brazil, can last up to 75 years, according to experts. American pine, they say, begins to show significant wear after two or three years of use.

But harvesting the wood has been linked to destruction of ecologically significant regions, which some scientists say contributes to global warming.

Last January, Ocean City officials scrapped a $1.1 million plan to replace part of its boardwalk with ipe, but only after the town's supplier failed to provide a sufficient amount of the South American lumber.

Despite months of pickets, lawsuits and 50,000 e-mails of protest engineered by the Rainforest Alliance, Ocean City authorities had reneged on a promise made 10 years earlier by a previous administration that "America's Greatest Family Resort" would never use hardwood harvested from environmentally fragile regions of the globe.

Ocean City Mayor Sal Perillo said that he could not ignore the potential long-term cost savings of installing ipe, which is sometimes called ironwood for its durability.

Advocates of using the wood - which has been employed by beach towns from Atlantic City to Miami to Long Beach, Calif. - cited a new certification process, crafted by the Brazilian government and the international Forest Stewardship Council, to identify companies that meet strict criteria for managing lumbering operations.

Environmentalists contend that the certification misses the point, however. While an operation may be "well-managed," say the critics, it is not required to have a sustainable plan to regrow the destroyed rain forests.

In the end, the preservationists got what they wanted. When a Baltimore supplier failed to deliver Ocean City's ipe on time, officials voted to dissolve the contract and purchase yellow pine. The decision was a practical one, city officials said, and had nothing to do with the environmentalists' complaints.

Despite the backlash to Ocean City's proprosal to use ipe, Wildwood Mayor Ernest Troiano Jr. announced last week that his town had contracted with a North Jersey supplier for the rain-forest wood to redeck the boardwalk between Schellenger and Oak Avenues.

Things had been moving at a good clip: Since the end of the summer season workers had installed new sewer and water lines and created a utility corridor beneath one of the most heavily trafficked sections of the 1.89-mile walkway, which snakes from North Wildwood and Wildwood to Wildwood Crest.

Troiano said the town tried to do the right thing: It had avoided rain-forest lumber and ordered 42,000 lineal feet of American black locust wood from New York.

How matters went awry is in dispute. When Troiano saw the black locust two weeks ago, he considered it of poor quality. Eight of every 10 boards were chipped, split, knotty or contained bark, he said.

The supplier, Lifetime Locust Fence & Lumber of Broadalbin, N.Y., says the wood was the grade that Wildwood ordered. Non-premium black locust contains visual irregularities, but the same grade has been used with success elsewhere on the Jersey Shore, said Tom Downs, owner of Lifetime Locust Fence.

Downs said his company planned to sue the city for costs and labor and for smearing its reputation. There has been no word of plans by Wildwood to sue Lifetime.

All that businesses in Wildwood know is that work on the boardwalk has been halted.

"It was scary to see it all come to a stop because we need to see this work finished," said Noreen Klinger, whose family owns a boardwalk gift shop. Easter weekend, which this year is in mid-April, is when Shore business traditionally picks up.

"We need to be ready when that first tourist of the season sets foot on that boardwalk; otherwise, in this economy, we're sunk," Klinger said.

Wildwood needs to install particularly strong decking because its walk also supports heavy equipment, such as fire trucks and ambulances, Troiano said.

"We could never even consider using pine," he said.

Troiano said the town was unlikely ever to use recycled-plastic boards or to replace the walkway with concrete.

"Plastic has a tendency to retain extreme heat and could burn the feet of pedestrians. . . . If we used a lighter color to keep the heat down, then the walkway itself would look dirty from people walking on it," he said.

Besides, the concrete supports under the boardwalk could not be retrofitted to accommodate nonwood boards, which are "cut at a completely different width," he said.

"People are funny when it comes to the boardwalk," Troiano said. "They like tradition. They don't want a plastic boardwalk or a concrete boardwalk. They want a board walk."

Troiano said that efforts to acquire more black locust had been unsuccessful. He has apologized to the public and environmental groups for deciding to use ipe, which he says is the only material available on short notice that's strong enough for the job.

He vows that the city will use environmentally sound materials to redeck the rest of the boardwalk.